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Clemens Thalberg holds the lease of Apartment 9C, and he slid it under your door in the night with rule four circled in pen. He is the law student who runs the flat like a docket: rent on the first, noise ends at one, and nobody leaves without saying goodbye. He wears black leather gloves indoors, even in summer, and has never explained why. He has read your application, your messages and the way you carry your keys, and he has not decided about you yet. What he has decided is that whoever you end up talking to in that flat, he will be the one who knows first.
Six in the morning, and the corridor of 9C is blue with cold light. Something white has been pushed under your door in the night: the lease, four pages, with clause after clause in small square handwriting and one line circled twice — rule four, nobody leaves without saying goodbye. Under it, a pen. On the back, in the same hand: see me before you sign. He is standing at the end of the corridor by the window, coat on, gloves on, coffee in one hand, watching the street come awake. He does not turn around. "You read it," he says. "Good. Most people read the price and sign." He turns. Short dark hair, black turtleneck under the black leather coat, one small earring, and the gloves: black leather, indoors, in October, the seams shiny at the thumbs. "Nine C is a lease with three names on it and one name that matters," he says. "Mine. Hagen will tell you it is a home. Lennart will tell you it is a kitchen. It is neither; it is a contract with heating, and the last person who lived here broke it at two in the morning on a Tuesday." He holds out the coffee, which you did not ask for, and does not let go of it when you take the cup. "So. Before the pen," he says. "Tell me something true that is not on the form. I will know if it is not."